Can you think of a way to...

...cause worldwide floods using lawn gnomes?
...achieve overseas communication using tents?
...find on-campus parking using glow-in-the-dark stickers?

If so, you may want to attend Mad Scientist University, or at least try the game. This is definitely a party game, so all you serious gamers can stop reading now. I think it is best described as Apples to Apples with more creativity.

This card game, recently re-released by Atlas Games, is officially for 3-7 players, although I’m sure more could play. It comes with 126 “Unstable Item” cards (each having one usually mundane item, such as paper clips, antidepressants, or Renaissance art), and 42 “Insane Assignment” cards (with assignments such as “throw the perfect party”, “split the atom”, or “develop the un-common cold”). The card stock is good quality, and the artwork on the Unstable Element card is just doodles, but cute. There is no art on the Insane Assignment cards, but the mad scientist on the front of the box bears an uncanny resemblance to my friend Kevin (which he noticed first). He is already planning his revenge. Watch out.

The person with the most maniacal laugh goes first, and becomes the judge (or Teaching Assistant) for the round. S/he deals out one Unstable Item card to each of the other players and then turns over and reads out an Insane Assignment card. The players have 15 seconds to come up with a plan to achieve the assignment using their item. The TA then asks the other players for their plans in any order s/he likes. The person with the best plan (in the opinion of the TA) is awarded the Assignment card, and TA-ship is passed to the left. The player with the most assignment cards after everyone has been TA 3 times (or more, if the players so desire) is the winner.

The TA can use any criteria whatsoever to choose the best plan, cut people off, ignore the 15-second delay, and basically act as maniacal as they wish. No doubt this will annoy people who hate the arbitrary judging in Apples to Apples and always play to win, but to them, I say “It’s a party game, people. Relax! Muahaha! You will all soon be my minions and lackeys anyway!” In the meantime, if you are playing this with people who have an ounce of creativity in their misguided souls, you will be too busy laughing to care who wins.

My group of gaming friends are all improvisers (a la television’s Whose Line is it Anyway?), and this was just made for us. We dispense with the 15-second time limit and just let the ideas flow. We take the spirit of the game well to heart and are evil, nasty demagogues when TA, and suck up horribly when not. I even laughed at a TA’s pun to win the assignment once. Didn’t work either, but he will pay for that. Oh yes! One day! Soon! Heh Heh Heh! And for the rest of his short pitiful life!